My fixtags script is an extension for gPodder to automatically fix the MP3 tags (of the known podcasts) so that the Sandisk Sansa Clip+’s official firmware would properly recognize them. More information about this is in my old post. There are no new firmware versions anymore and the player seems to be discontinued.

I’ve started using Rockbox on my player a few years ago and it’s better and has many more features than the stock firmware. Here are some of the ones I’m using:

• Playlists — the official firmware classifies an audio file as a podcast or not; if it is, the player allows you to change the playback speed and automatically stores the position in the file, but can’t add them to playlists. There is some logic in distinguishing them, but it’s very inconvenient.

• Fine-grained speed control, up to 2×, whereas the official firmware had only “faster” (which was about 1.1×). It’s not persisted between reboots (authors’ decision), but there is an old thread with a patch that may still work.

• The left and right buttons can be set to skip a few seconds instead of switching to a previous/next track. For example, I set “Skip Length” to 5 seconds and don’t have accidental track skips anymore; it’s also much easier to skip some sections in podcasts.

• “Timestretch” lets you hear the voices without changing their frequency to be higher. It’s hard to describe the audible changes, so try it both on and off.

There are many more settings in Rockbox, read the fine manual.

Because I don’t use the official firmware anymore, I stopped updating the fixtags script (yes, I could have made it more automatic), so the project is now deprecated. I don’t know if anyone else used it.